Rationale: Children should have a time set aside each
and
every day for reading practice. A great way to practice reading
is
silently. Before students read silently they should be reminded of the
strategies they need to demonstrate when reading for meaning.
Nearing
exit of elementary school, children must be able to summarize.
Children
need to be able comprehend and store information in their brain for
many
subjects. Summarization is one of the many skills that children
must
possess while reading expository texts. For many children
comprehension
is a strategy that doesnât come easy, therefore it is the
teacherâs
role to teach and model as best possible.

Procedures: 1. ãOpen your science
textbook
and turn to Lesson 6. This lesson should be entitled
ÎWeatherâ
which begins on page 65. This lesson contains five other
paragraphs
in it. I want you to read the first paragraph silently to
yourself.
Remember that when we read to ourselves silently, we say the words to
ourselves
and not out loud.ä Tell students to read slowly if needed
because
if were not comprehending what were reading then we have to go back and
reread again. However, allow no more than five minutes for this
short
passage.
2. Explain to students that summarization is one way that helps us
when were trying to comprehend what we read. Tell students that ãsummarizing
a paragraph after reading, helps us to recall the most important things
we just read.ä
3. Have students read the section in their textbook entitled
ãWeather.ä
Students will reread the first paragraph again and continue to read the
rest of them silently. When they are done reading, I will ask
them
very detailed questions about very specific things mentioned in the
reading.
I will ask questions that are unimportant. Most likely the
students
will not remember the answers to the questions because they were
mentioned
very briefly and are of small detail. Explain to students that
because
it is so hard to remember the details of a passage that seem of no
importance
we can summarize it and remember the main ideas or most important
details
of the passage.
4. Explain that if we delete unimportant information, substitute easy
terms for lists of items, and select a topic sentence we will be on our
way to summarizing we what we have read.
5. Teacher should model the above rules in order for students to see
and fully understand. Model the first passage students were
supposed
to have read by writing it on the board. Then make a summary from
the passage using the above rules. ãWeather happens all
around
us each and every day. Some weather may be violent like tornadoes
and thunderstorms and some weather may be calm like a bright sunny
day.
Different weather patterns can create different things. Can you
think
of some weather patterns we havenât mentioned?ä
6. Teacher will then select one of the other passages from the six
in the lesson. This time the class will work as a whole to summarize
the
passage. The students will call out to the teacher as he/she writes the
summary given to her by the students.
7. Students now will be divided into small groups of five. Each
group will be assigned a different passage to summarize. All of
these
passages should have been read by now. When summaries have been
composed,
allow each group to read aloud their summaries recreating new meanings
to the passages. They should include only the most important details in
each one of them.
8. For assessment, have a piece of paper run off with five passages
written on it. Each child can select a passage from any of the passages
on the handout. Ask each child to write a summary on an individual
passage.
In evaluating their passage have a checklist indicating whether or not
the child showed whether or not he understood how to delete unimportant
information, substitute easy terms for lists of items, and select a
topic
sentence.